While I hate to disprove co-author Pete Abel or John F. Harris or the venerable Tribble Ad Agency, I now have the final results in hand as to who Obama’s running mate will be in this race. As many have suggested, the final choice comes as a great surprise and is likely driven in large part by Obama’s recently-slipping poll numbers. Be that as it may, on Thursday afternoon, Barack Obama will name, as his running mate… Bob Barr.

And why not? At this point my guess is about as good as anyone else’s. For what it’s worth, I do believe that Obama’s team is getting ready to throw everyone a curveball and many of these rumors have been head fakes. I see him picking an unexpected choice. It could still be Hillary if he’s feeling really desperate, or perhaps somebody as far off the scale as Al Gore. The Senator from Rhode Island is also another strong contender. I don’t know if any of these will pull out the election for him at this point, but I’ll go ahead and predict a dark horse over the conventional wisdom. It just seems to fit in with the current mindset of the campaign.

But I’ll let you know my prediction for sure next week.